Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
which the national government eliminated subsidies on fertilizer and
other products while simultaneously opening up India's markets to inter-
national competition
—aggravated the financial situation of many farm-
ers. Faced with high prices for agricultural inputs and low prices for their
crops, many smaller farmers found themselves trapped by heavy debts
they could not see a way to repay.66 Because they had turned to grow-
ing cash crops, formerly self-
sufficient farmers and families had become
wholly dependent on markets for the food they ate as well. As the price of
grain and other staple foods soared in the 2000s, these families became
increasingly vulnerable to hunger.
The majority of farmers in one study ended their lives by drinking liq-
uid pesticides. The researchers suggested that this may have been a pop-
ular method of ending one's life because of the widespread availability of
chemicals such as furadan on farms and in agrarian areas.67 T The World
Health Organization (WHO) has noted that pesticide consumption is not
an uncommon way of commiting suicide in rural areas of the developing
world.68
Even disr egar ding suicide, Kerala has had a contentious history
with pesticides. From 1976 to 2002, the Plantation Corporation of Kerala,
a public sector company, sprayed the pesticide endosulfan aerially over
its cashew plantations and neighboring areas in the northern district of
Kasaragod, totaling over forty-ive hundred hectares.69 In the late 1980s
and early 1990s, community members, farmers, and local agricultural
officers began noticing a high number of birth defects, developmental dis-
abilities, and abnormal deaths among young people in the district. These
defects were soon linked to endosulfan.
Endosulfan is a persistent organic pollutant (POP), a chemical com-
pound that resists breaking down easily, thereby persisting in the envi-
ronment for years and even decades, long after it is initially applied. POPs
can travel through the air and water, and they have been found in places
as remote as the Arctic. Since they do not degrade quickly, they accumu-
late in food systems and in human and animal bodies, slowly amplifying
health risks over time.
The chemical pesticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, colloquially
